CHAPTER XIVToC

[7]Dr. Arthur Newsholme'sVital Statisticsshould be in public libraries and on the shelves of health officers, public-spirited physicians, and school superintendents.

Last year a conference on the physical welfare of school children was told by a woman principal: "Of course we need physicians to examine our children and to teach the parents, but many of us principals believe that our school curriculum and our school environment manufacture more physical defects in a month than all your physicians and nurses will correct in a year." At the same meeting the physical director of schools of New York City appealed eloquently for "biological engineers" at school, who would test the child's strength as building engineers are employed to test the strength of beams and foundations.[8]As explanation for the need of the then recently organized National School Hygiene Association, he elaborated the proposition that school requirements and school environment damage child health. "Ocular defects are in direct ratio to the length of time the pupil has attended school.... A desk that is too high may easily be the indirect agent for causing scoliosis, producing myopia or astigmatism.... Physically examine school children by all means, but do not fail to examine school desks."

Fifty schools in different parts of New York City were examined last year with especial reference to the factors likely to cause or to aggravate physical defects.[9]The results,tabulated and analyzed, prove that the woman principal was right; many schools are so built or so conducted, many school courses are so devised or so executed, that children are inevitably injured by the environment in which the compulsory education law forces them to spend their formative years.

One Of New York City's Roof PlaygroundsONE OF NEW YORK CITY'S ROOF PLAYGROUNDS

ONE OF NEW YORK CITY'S ROOF PLAYGROUNDS

Recently I noticed that our little office girl, so anæmic and nervous when she left school that we hesitated to employ her, was becoming rosy and spirited. The child herself explained the change: "I like it better. I have more money to spend. I get more outdoor exercise, and then, oh, the room is so much sunnier and there is more air and the people are all so nice!" And these were just the necessities which were lacking in the school from which she came. Moreover, it is a fair commentary on the school work and the school hygiene in too many of our towns and cities to-day. "I like it better" means that school work is not adapted to the dominant interests of the child, that the curriculum includes subjects remote from the needs and ambitions of the modern school child, and fails to include certain other subjects which it recognizes as useful and necessary, andtherefore finds interesting. "I have more money to spend" means that this little girl was able to have certain things, like a warm, pretty dress, rubbers, or an occasional trolley ride, which she longed for and needed. "I get more outdoor exercise" means that there was no open-air playground for her school, that "setting up" exercises were forgotten, that recess was taken up in rushing home, eating lunch, and rushing back again, and that "after school" was filled up with "helping mother with the housework." "The office is so much sunnier and I get more air" accounts for the increase in vitality; and "the people are all so nice," for the happy expression and initiative which the undiscriminating discipline at school had crushed out.

Bone Tuberculosis Is One Of The Penalties For Dry Sweeping And Feather DustersBONE TUBERCULOSIS IS ONE OF THE PENALTIES FOR DRY SWEEPING AND FEATHER DUSTERS

BONE TUBERCULOSIS IS ONE OF THE PENALTIES FOR DRY SWEEPING AND FEATHER DUSTERS

For such unsanitary conditions crowded sections of great cities have no apologies to make to rural districts. A wealthy suburb recently learned that there was overcrowding in every class room, and that one school building was so unsanitary as to be a menace to the community. Unadjustable desks, dry sweeping, feather dusters, shiny blackboards, harassing discipline that wrecks nerves, excessive home study and subjects that bore, are not peculiar to greatcities. In a little western town a competition between two self-governing brigades for merit points was determined by the amount of home study; looking back fifteen years, I can see that I was encouraging anæmic and overambitious children to rob themselves of play, sleep, and vitality. Many a rural school violates with impunity more laws of health than city factories are now permitted to transgress.

After child labor is stopped, national and state child labor committees will learn that their real interest all the time has been child welfare, not child age, and will be able to use much of the old literature, simply substituting for "factory" the word "school" when condemning "hazardous occupations likely to sap [children's] nervous energy, stunt their physical growth, blight their minds, destroy their moral fiber, and fit them for the moral scrap heap."

Many of the evils of school environment the teacher can avert, others the school trustee should be expected to correct. So far as unsanitary conditions are permitted, the school accentuates home evils, whereas it should counteract them by instilling proper health habits that will be taken home and practiced. Questions such as were asked in Miss North's study will prove serviceable to any one desiring to know the probable effect of a particular school environment upon children subject to it. Especially should principals, superintendents, directors, and volunteer committeemen apply such tests to the public, parochial, or private school, orphanage or reformatory for which they may be responsible.

I. Neighborhood Health Resources

1. Is the district congested?2. Is congestion growing?3. How far away is the nearest public park?a.Is it large enough?b.Has it a playground or beauty spot?c.Has it swings and games?d.Is play supervised?e.Have children of different ages equal opportunities, or do the large children monopolize the ground?f.Are children encouraged by teachers and parents to use this park?4. Are the streets suitable for play?a.Does the sun reach them?b.Are they broad?c.Are they crowded with traffic?5. How far away is the nearest public bath?a.Has it a swimming pool?b.Has it showers?c.Is it used as an annex to the school?

1. Is the district congested?

2. Is congestion growing?

3. How far away is the nearest public park?

a.Is it large enough?b.Has it a playground or beauty spot?c.Has it swings and games?d.Is play supervised?e.Have children of different ages equal opportunities, or do the large children monopolize the ground?f.Are children encouraged by teachers and parents to use this park?

4. Are the streets suitable for play?

a.Does the sun reach them?b.Are they broad?c.Are they crowded with traffic?

5. How far away is the nearest public bath?

a.Has it a swimming pool?b.Has it showers?c.Is it used as an annex to the school?

Vacation-school Play Clinic On A "Vacant" City Lot Owned By The Rockefeller Institute For Medical ResearchVACATION-SCHOOL PLAY CLINIC ON A "VACANT" CITY LOTOWNED BY THE ROCKEFELLER INSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH

VACATION-SCHOOL PLAY CLINIC ON A "VACANT" CITY LOTOWNED BY THE ROCKEFELLER INSTITUTE FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH

II. Effect of School Equipment upon Health

1. Is there an indoor yard?a.Is the area adequate or inadequate?b.Is the floor wood, cement, or dirt?c.Is the heat adequate or deficient?d.Is the ventilation adequate or deficient?e.Is the daylight adequate, deficient, or almost lacking?f.Is there equipment for light gymnastics and games?g.Is it used out of school hours; by special classes, athletic teams, etc., or by pupils generally?2. Is there an outdoor yard?a.Is the area ample or inadequate?b.Is the area mainly occupied by toilets?c.Is the daylight sufficient or deficient?d.For how many hours does the sun reach it?e.Is it equipped for games?f.How much larger ought it to be?g.Is it used out of school hours; by special classes, athletic teams, etc., or by pupils generally?3. Is there a gymnasium?a.Is it large enough?b.Is it used for a gymnasium?c.Is it cut up into class rooms?d.Is it used out of school hours; by special classes, athletic teams, etc., or by pupils generally?4. Is there a roof playground?a.Is there open ventilation?b.Is it used in the daytime?c.Is it used at night?d.Is it used during the summer?e.Is it monopolized by the larger children?f.Is it used out of school hours; by special classes, athletic teams, etc., or by pupils generally?5. Are washing facilities adequate?a.How many pupils per washbasin?b.Are there individual towels?c.Have eye troubles been spread by roller towels?d.Are only clean towels permitted?e.Are there bathing facilities; are these adequate?f.Are swimming pools used for games, contests, etc.?g.Are bathing facilities used out of school hours?h.Who is responsible for cleanliness of towels, washbasins, and swimming pools?i.How often is water changed in swimming pool, or is it constantly changing?6. Is adequate provision made for clean drinking water?a.Are sanitary fountains used that prevent contamination of faucet or water?b.How often are cups or faucets cleaned?7. Is provision made for airing outer clothing?a.Are children permitted to pile their clothing in the class room?b.Are there hooks for each child?c.Are lockers provided with wire netting to permit ventilation?d.Are lockers or hooks in the halls or in the basement?e.Have you ever thought of the disciplinary and social value of cheap coat hangers to prevent wrinkling and tearing?

1. Is there an indoor yard?

a.Is the area adequate or inadequate?b.Is the floor wood, cement, or dirt?c.Is the heat adequate or deficient?d.Is the ventilation adequate or deficient?e.Is the daylight adequate, deficient, or almost lacking?f.Is there equipment for light gymnastics and games?g.Is it used out of school hours; by special classes, athletic teams, etc., or by pupils generally?

2. Is there an outdoor yard?

a.Is the area ample or inadequate?b.Is the area mainly occupied by toilets?c.Is the daylight sufficient or deficient?d.For how many hours does the sun reach it?e.Is it equipped for games?f.How much larger ought it to be?g.Is it used out of school hours; by special classes, athletic teams, etc., or by pupils generally?

3. Is there a gymnasium?

a.Is it large enough?b.Is it used for a gymnasium?c.Is it cut up into class rooms?d.Is it used out of school hours; by special classes, athletic teams, etc., or by pupils generally?

4. Is there a roof playground?

a.Is there open ventilation?b.Is it used in the daytime?c.Is it used at night?d.Is it used during the summer?e.Is it monopolized by the larger children?f.Is it used out of school hours; by special classes, athletic teams, etc., or by pupils generally?

5. Are washing facilities adequate?

a.How many pupils per washbasin?b.Are there individual towels?c.Have eye troubles been spread by roller towels?d.Are only clean towels permitted?e.Are there bathing facilities; are these adequate?f.Are swimming pools used for games, contests, etc.?g.Are bathing facilities used out of school hours?h.Who is responsible for cleanliness of towels, washbasins, and swimming pools?i.How often is water changed in swimming pool, or is it constantly changing?

6. Is adequate provision made for clean drinking water?

a.Are sanitary fountains used that prevent contamination of faucet or water?b.How often are cups or faucets cleaned?

7. Is provision made for airing outer clothing?

a.Are children permitted to pile their clothing in the class room?b.Are there hooks for each child?c.Are lockers provided with wire netting to permit ventilation?d.Are lockers or hooks in the halls or in the basement?e.Have you ever thought of the disciplinary and social value of cheap coat hangers to prevent wrinkling and tearing?

An Attempt To Overcome The Disadvantages Of Congestion--A Boys' High School, New York CityAN ATTEMPT TO OVERCOME THE DISADVANTAGES OF CONGESTION—A BOYS' HIGH SCHOOL, NEW YORK CITY

AN ATTEMPT TO OVERCOME THE DISADVANTAGES OF CONGESTION—A BOYS' HIGH SCHOOL, NEW YORK CITY

III. The Class Room as a Place of Confinement

1. How many sittings are provided?a.How many pupils are there?2. What is the total floor area?a.What proportion is not occupied by desks?3. Are the seats adjustable?a.Are the seats adjusted to pupils?b.Where desks are adjustable, are short children seated in low desks, or are children seated according to class or according to discipline exigencies without regard to size of desk?c.Are seats placed properly with reference to light?4. Is the light ample and proper?a.For how many hours must artificial light be used in the daytime?b.Is artificial light adequate for night work?c.Does the reflection of light from blackboard and walls injure the eye?d.Are the blackboards black enough?e.Are the walls too dark?f.Is the woodwork too dark?g.Are window panes kept clean?5. Is the air always fresh?a.Is ventilation by open windows?b.Is ventilation artificial?c.Does the ventilating apparatus work satisfactorily?d.Are the windows thrown open during recess, and after and before school?e.Do unclean clothes vitiate the atmosphere?f.Do unclean persons vitiate the atmosphere?g.Does bad breath vitiate the atmosphere?h.Are pupils and parents taught that unclean clothes, unclean persons, and bad breath may decrease the benefits of otherwise adequate ventilation and seriously aggravate the evils of inadequate ventilation?6. Is the temperature properly regulated?a.Has every class room a thermometer?b.Are teachers required to record the thermometer's story three or more times daily?c.Is excess or deficiency at once reported to the janitor?7. Are the floors, walls, desks, and windows always clean?a.How often are they washed?b.Is twice a year often enough?c.Do the floors and walls contain the dust of years?d.Is dry sweeping prohibited?e.Has wet sawdust or even wet sand been tried?f.Has oil ever been used to keep down surface dust on floors?g.Are feather dusters prohibited?h.Are dust rags moist or dry?i.Is an odorless disinfectant used?8. Does overheating prevail?a.Do you know teachers and principals who protest against insufficient ventilation, particularly against mechanical ventilation, while they themselves are "in heavy winter clothing in a small room closely sealed, the thermometer at 80 degrees"?

1. How many sittings are provided?

a.How many pupils are there?

2. What is the total floor area?

a.What proportion is not occupied by desks?

3. Are the seats adjustable?

a.Are the seats adjusted to pupils?b.Where desks are adjustable, are short children seated in low desks, or are children seated according to class or according to discipline exigencies without regard to size of desk?c.Are seats placed properly with reference to light?

4. Is the light ample and proper?

a.For how many hours must artificial light be used in the daytime?b.Is artificial light adequate for night work?c.Does the reflection of light from blackboard and walls injure the eye?d.Are the blackboards black enough?e.Are the walls too dark?f.Is the woodwork too dark?g.Are window panes kept clean?

5. Is the air always fresh?

a.Is ventilation by open windows?b.Is ventilation artificial?c.Does the ventilating apparatus work satisfactorily?d.Are the windows thrown open during recess, and after and before school?e.Do unclean clothes vitiate the atmosphere?f.Do unclean persons vitiate the atmosphere?g.Does bad breath vitiate the atmosphere?h.Are pupils and parents taught that unclean clothes, unclean persons, and bad breath may decrease the benefits of otherwise adequate ventilation and seriously aggravate the evils of inadequate ventilation?

6. Is the temperature properly regulated?

a.Has every class room a thermometer?b.Are teachers required to record the thermometer's story three or more times daily?c.Is excess or deficiency at once reported to the janitor?

7. Are the floors, walls, desks, and windows always clean?

a.How often are they washed?b.Is twice a year often enough?c.Do the floors and walls contain the dust of years?d.Is dry sweeping prohibited?e.Has wet sawdust or even wet sand been tried?f.Has oil ever been used to keep down surface dust on floors?g.Are feather dusters prohibited?h.Are dust rags moist or dry?i.Is an odorless disinfectant used?

8. Does overheating prevail?

a.Do you know teachers and principals who protest against insufficient ventilation, particularly against mechanical ventilation, while they themselves are "in heavy winter clothing in a small room closely sealed, the thermometer at 80 degrees"?

IV. Exercise and Recreation

1. How much time and at what periods is exercise provided for in the school schedule?a.Indoors?b.Outdoors?2. How much exercise indoors and outdoors is actually given?3. Are the windows open during exercise?4. Is exercise suited to each child by the school physician after physical examination, or are all children compelled to take the same exercise?5. Whose business is it to see that rules regarding exercise are strictly enforced?6. Do clouds of dust rise from the floor during exercise and play?7. Are children deprived of exercise as a penalty?8. Should hygiene talks be considered as exercise?

1. How much time and at what periods is exercise provided for in the school schedule?

a.Indoors?b.Outdoors?

2. How much exercise indoors and outdoors is actually given?

3. Are the windows open during exercise?

4. Is exercise suited to each child by the school physician after physical examination, or are all children compelled to take the same exercise?

5. Whose business is it to see that rules regarding exercise are strictly enforced?

6. Do clouds of dust rise from the floor during exercise and play?

7. Are children deprived of exercise as a penalty?

8. Should hygiene talks be considered as exercise?

Home Workshops Need Fresh AirHOME WORKSHOPS NEED FRESH AIR

HOME WORKSHOPS NEED FRESH AIR

V. The School Janitor and Cleaners

1. Do they understand the relation of cleanliness to vitality?2. Is their aim to do the least possible amount of work, or to attain the highest possible standard of cleanliness?3. Will the teacher's complaint of uncleanliness be heeded by trustees? If so, is the teacher not responsible for uncleanliness?4. Have you ever tried to stimulate the pride of janitors and cleaners for social service?a.Have you ever tried to show them how much work they save themselves by thorough cleansing?b.Have you ever shown them the danger, to their own health, of dust and dirt that may harbor infection and reduce their own vitality?5. What effort is made to instruct janitors and cleaners by your school trustees or by your community?6. Have you explained to pupils the important responsibility of janitors for the health of those in the tenements, office buildings, or schools?a.Do you see in this an opportunity to emphasize indirectly the mother's responsibility for cleanliness of home?

1. Do they understand the relation of cleanliness to vitality?

2. Is their aim to do the least possible amount of work, or to attain the highest possible standard of cleanliness?

3. Will the teacher's complaint of uncleanliness be heeded by trustees? If so, is the teacher not responsible for uncleanliness?

4. Have you ever tried to stimulate the pride of janitors and cleaners for social service?

a.Have you ever tried to show them how much work they save themselves by thorough cleansing?b.Have you ever shown them the danger, to their own health, of dust and dirt that may harbor infection and reduce their own vitality?

5. What effort is made to instruct janitors and cleaners by your school trustees or by your community?

6. Have you explained to pupils the important responsibility of janitors for the health of those in the tenements, office buildings, or schools?

a.Do you see in this an opportunity to emphasize indirectly the mother's responsibility for cleanliness of home?

School Workshops Also Need Fresh AirSCHOOL WORKSHOPS ALSO NEED FRESH AIR

SCHOOL WORKSHOPS ALSO NEED FRESH AIR

VI. Requirements of Curriculum

1. How much home study is there?a.How much is required?b.What steps are taken to prevent excessive home study?c.Are light and ventilation conditions at home considered when deciding upon amount of home study?2. Is the child fitted to the curriculum, or is the curriculum fitted to the child?a.Does failure or backwardness in studies lead to additional study hours or to regrading?b.Are there too many subjects?c.Are the recitation periods too long?d.Are the exercise periods too short and too few?e.Is there too much close-range work?f.Is it possible to give individual attention to individual needs so as to awaken individual interest?3. Is follow-up work organized to enlist interest of parents, or, if necessary, of outside agencies in fitting a child to do that for which, if normal, he would be physically adapted?

1. How much home study is there?

a.How much is required?b.What steps are taken to prevent excessive home study?c.Are light and ventilation conditions at home considered when deciding upon amount of home study?

2. Is the child fitted to the curriculum, or is the curriculum fitted to the child?

a.Does failure or backwardness in studies lead to additional study hours or to regrading?b.Are there too many subjects?c.Are the recitation periods too long?d.Are the exercise periods too short and too few?e.Is there too much close-range work?f.Is it possible to give individual attention to individual needs so as to awaken individual interest?

3. Is follow-up work organized to enlist interest of parents, or, if necessary, of outside agencies in fitting a child to do that for which, if normal, he would be physically adapted?

By reducing the harm done by old buildings and by the traditions of curriculum and discipline, teachers can do a great deal. Perhaps they cannot move the windows or the desks, but they can move the children. If they cannot insure sanitary conditions for home study, they can cut down the home study. If the directors do not provide proper blackboards, they can do less blackboard work. They can make children as conscious, as afraid, and as resentful of dirty air as of dirty teeth. They can make janitors believe that "dry sweeping" or "feather dusting" may give them consumption, and leave most of the dirt in the room to make work for the next day; that adjustable desks are made to fit the child's legs and back, not the monkey wrench; that the thermometer in the schoolroom is a safer guide to heat needed than a boiler gauge in the basement; that fresh air heated by coal is cheaper for the school fund than stale air heated by bodies and by bad breath. Finally, they can make known to pupils, to parents, to principals and superintendents, to health officials and to the public, the extent to which school environment violates the precepts of school hygiene.

If the state requires the attendance of all children between the ages of five and fourteen at school for five hours a day, for five days in the week, for ten months in the year, then it should undertake to see that the machinery it provides for the education of those children for the greater part of the time for nine years of their lives—the formative years of their lives—is neither injuring their health nor retarding their full development.

If the amount of "close-range" work is rapidly manufacturing myopic eyes; if bad ventilation, whether due tofaulty construction or to faulty management, is preparing soil for the tubercle bacillus; if children with contagious diseases are not found and segregated; if desks are so ill adapted to children's sizes and physical needs that they are forming crooked spines; if too many children are crowded into one room; if lack of air and light is producing strained eyes and malnutrition; if neither open air, space, nor time is provided for exercise, games, and physical training; if school discipline is adapted neither to the psychology nor the physiology of child or teacher, then the state is depriving the child of a greater right than the compulsory education law forces it to endure. Not only is the right to health sacrificed to the right to education, but education and health are both sacrificed.

In undertaking to enforce the compulsory education law, to put all truants and child laborers in school, the state should be very sure for its own sake that it is not depriving the child of the health on which depends his future usefulness to the state as well as to himself.

Table XI

Effects of a Child Labor Law

Increase in Chicago Attendance

Table XI: Effects of a Child Labor Law

[8]The Sanitation of Public Buildings, by William Paul Gerhard, contains a valuable discussion of how the school may avoid manufacturing physical defects.

[9]By Professor Lila V. North, Baltimore College for Women, for the New York Committee on the Physical Welfare of School Children, 105 East 22d Street, New York City.

"Teachers, gentlemen, no less than pupils, have a heaven-ordained right to work so adjusted that the highest possible physical condition shall be maintained automatically." This declaration thundered out by an indignant physician startled a well-meaning board of school directors. The teacher's right to health was, of course, obvious when once mentioned, and the directors concluded:

1. School conditions that injure child health also injure teacher health.2. Poor health of teacher causes poor health of pupil.3. Poor health of pupil often causes poor health of teacher.4. Adequate protection of children requires adequate protection of their teachers.5. Teachers have a right to health protection for their own sake as well as for their children's sake.

1. School conditions that injure child health also injure teacher health.

2. Poor health of teacher causes poor health of pupil.

3. Poor health of pupil often causes poor health of teacher.

4. Adequate protection of children requires adequate protection of their teachers.

5. Teachers have a right to health protection for their own sake as well as for their children's sake.

Too little concern has hitherto been shown for the vitality of teachers in private or public schools and colleges. Without protest, and without notice until too late, teachers often neglect their own health at home and at school,—recklessly overwork, undersleep, and undernourish; ruin their eyes, their digestion, and their nerves. School-teachers are frequently "sweated" as mercilessly as factory operatives. The time has come to admit that a school environment which destroys the health of the teacher is as unnecessary and reprehensible as an army camp that spreads typhoid among a nation's defenders. A school curriculum or a college tradition that breaks down teachers is as inexcusable as a gun that kills the gunner when discharged.Experience everywhere else proves that periodic physical examinations and health precautions, not essays about "happy teachers—happy pupils," are indispensable if teachers' health rights are to be protected.

Physical tests are imposed upon applicants for teachers' licenses by many boards of education. In New York City about three per cent of those examined are excluded for defects of vision, of hearing, of probable endurance. Once a teacher, however, there is no further physical examination,—no way of discovering physical incapacity, nothing to prevent a teacher from exposing class after class to pulmonary tuberculosis contracted because of overwork and underventilation. The certainty of salary increase year by year and of a pension after the twentieth year will bribe many a teacher to overtax her own strength and to jeopardize her pupils' health.

Seldom do training schools apply physical tests to students who intend to become teachers. One young girl says that before starting her normal course she is going to the physician of the board of education for examination, so as to avoid the experience of one of her friends, who, after preparing to be a teacher, was rejected because of pulmonary tuberculosis. During her normal course no examination will be necessary. Overwork during the first year may cause pulmonary tuberculosis, and in spite of her foresight she, too, may be rejected four years hence.

The advantages of physical examination upon beginning and during the courses that prepare one for a teacher are so obvious that but little opposition will be given by prospective teachers. The disadvantages to teacher and pupil alike of suffering from physical defects are so obvious that every school which prepares men and women for teachers should make registration and certification dependent upon passing a satisfactory physical test. No school should engage a teacher who has not good proof that she can do therequired work without injury to her own or her pupils' health. Long before physicians can discover pulmonary tuberculosis they can find depleted vitality which invites this disease. Headaches due to eye trouble, undernourishment due to mouth breathing, preventable indigestion, are insidious enemies that cannot escape the physical test.

Three objections to physical tests for teachers will be urged, but each loses its force when considered in the light of general experience.

1.A sickly teacher is often the most efficient teacher in a school or a county.It is true that some sickly teachers exert a powerful influence over their pupils, but in most instances their influence and their efficiency are due to powers that exist in spite of devitalizing elements. Rarely does sickness itself bring power. It must be admitted that many a man is teaching who would be practicing law had his health permitted it. Many a woman's soul is shorn of its self-consciousness by suffering. But even in these exceptional instances it is probable that children are paying too dearly for benefits directly or indirectly traceable to defects that physical tests would exclude.

2.There are not enough healthy candidates to supply our schools.This is begging the question. In fact, no one knows it is true. On the contrary, it is probable that the teacher's opportunity will make even a stronger appeal to competent men and women after physical soundness and vitality are made conditions of teaching,—after we all believe what leading educators now believe, that the highest fulfillment of human possibilities requires a normal, sound body, abounding in vitality.

3.Examination by a physician, especially if a social acquaintance, is an unnecessary embarrassment.The false modesty that makes physical examination unwelcome to many adults, men as well as women, is easily overcome when the advantages of such examination are understood.It is likewise easy to prove to a teacher that the loss of time required in having the examination is infinitesimal compared with the loss of time due to ignoring physical needs. The programme for school hygiene outlined in Chapter XXVII, Part IV, assumes that state and county superintendents will provide for the examination of teachers as well as of pupils.

Teachers will Prefer Physical Examinations to Forced VacationsTEACHERS WILL PREFER PHYSICAL EXAMINATIONS TO FORCED VACATIONSBoston Society for Relief and Study of Tuberculosis

TEACHERS WILL PREFER PHYSICAL EXAMINATIONS TO FORCED VACATIONSBoston Society for Relief and Study of Tuberculosis

Because the health of others furnishes a stronger motive for preventive hygiene than our own health, it is probable that the general examination of teachers will come first as the result of a general conviction that unhealthy teachers positively injure the health of pupils and retard their mental development. Children at school age are so susceptible and imitative that their future habits of body and mind, their dispositions, their very voices and expressions, are influenced by those of their teachers. Experts in childstudy say that a child's vocal chords respond to the voices and noise about him before he is able to speak, so that the tones of his voice are determined before he is able to express them. This influence is also marked when the child begins to talk. Babies and young children instinctively do what adults learn not to do only by study,—follow the pitch of others' voices. Can we then overestimate the effect upon pupils' character of teachers who radiate vitality?

The character and fitness, aside from scholarship, of applicants for teachers' licenses are now subjected by the board of examiners of New York City to the following tests:

1. Moral character as indicated in the record of the applicant as a student or teacher or in other occupation, or as a participant in an examination.2. Physical fitness for the position sought, reference being had here to all questions of physical fitness other than those covered in a physician's report as to "sound health."3. Satisfactory quality and use of voice.4. Personal bearing, cleanliness, appearance, manners.5. Self-command and power to win and hold the respect of teachers, school authorities, and the community.6. Capacity for school discipline, power to maintain order and to secure the willing obedience and the friendship of pupils.7. Business or executive ability,—power to comprehend and carry out and to accomplish prescribed work, school management as relating to adjustment of desks, lighting, heating, ventilation, cleanliness, and attractiveness of schoolroom.8. Capacity for supervision, for organization and administration of a school, and for the instructing, assisting, and inspiring of teachers.

1. Moral character as indicated in the record of the applicant as a student or teacher or in other occupation, or as a participant in an examination.

2. Physical fitness for the position sought, reference being had here to all questions of physical fitness other than those covered in a physician's report as to "sound health."

3. Satisfactory quality and use of voice.

4. Personal bearing, cleanliness, appearance, manners.

5. Self-command and power to win and hold the respect of teachers, school authorities, and the community.

6. Capacity for school discipline, power to maintain order and to secure the willing obedience and the friendship of pupils.

7. Business or executive ability,—power to comprehend and carry out and to accomplish prescribed work, school management as relating to adjustment of desks, lighting, heating, ventilation, cleanliness, and attractiveness of schoolroom.

8. Capacity for supervision, for organization and administration of a school, and for the instructing, assisting, and inspiring of teachers.

These tests probably exclude few applicants who should be admitted. Experience proves that they include many who, for their own sake and for children's sake, should be rejected. The moral character, physical fitness, quality of voice, personal bearing, self-command, executive ability,capacity for supervision, are qualities that are modified by conditions. The voice that is satisfactory in conference with an examiner may be strident and irritating when the teacher is impatient or is trying to overcome street noises. On parade applicants are equally cleanly; this cannot be said of teachers in the service, coming from different home environments. Self-command is much easier in one school than in another. Physical fitness in a girl of twenty may, during one short year of teaching, give way to physical unfitness. Therefore the need forperiodic testsby principal, superintendent, and school board,to determine the continuing fitnessof a teacher to do the special task assigned to her, based upon physical evidence of her own vitality and of her favorable influence upon her pupils' health and enjoyment of school life. Shattered nerves due to overwork may explain a teacher's shouting: "You are a dirty boy. Your mother is a dirty woman and keeps a dirty store where no decent people will go to buy." A physical examination of that unfortunate teacher would probably show that she ought to be on leave of absence, rather than, by her overwork and loss of control, to cause the boys of her class to feel what one of them expressed: "Grandmother, if she spoke so of my mother I would strike her."

Just as there should be a central bureau to count and correct the open mouths and closed minds that clog the little old red schoolhouse of the country, so a central bureau should discover in the city teacher as well as in the country teacher the ailments more serious than tuberculosis that pass from teacher to pupil; slovenliness, ugly temper, frowning, crossness, lack of ambition, cynicism,—these should be blackballed as well as consumption, contagious morphine habit, and contagious skin disease. Crooked thinking by teacher leads to crooked thinking by pupil. Disregard of health laws by teacher encourages unhygienic living by pupils. A man whose fingers are yellow, nervesshaky, eyes unsteady, and mind alternately sleepy and hilarious from cigarettes, cannot convey pictures of normal, healthy physical living, nor can he successfully teach the moral and social evils of nicotinism. Both teacher and pupil have a right to the periodic physical examination of teachers that will give timely warning of attention needed. Until there is some system for giving this right to all teachers in private, parochial, charitable, and public schools, we shall produce many nervous, acrid, and physically threadbare teachers, where we should have only teachers who inspire their pupils with a passion for health by the example of a good complexion, sprightly step, bounding vitality, and forceful personality born of hygienic living.

Recently I traveled five hundred miles to address an audience on methods of fitting health remedies to local health needs. I told of certain dangers to be avoided, of results that had always followed certain remedies, of motives to be sought and used, of community ends to seek. Not knowing the local situation, I could not tell them exactly what to do next, or how or with whom to do it; not seeing the patient or his symptoms, I did not diagnose the disease or prescribe medicine. Several members of the audience who were particularly anxious to start a new organization on a metropolitan model were disappointed because they were told, not just how to organize, but rather how to find out what sort of organization their town needed. They were right in believing that it was easier to copy on paper a plan tried somewhere else, than to think out a plan for themselves. They had forgotten for the time being their many previous disappointments due to copying without question some plan of social work, just as they copy Paris or New York fashions. They had not expected to leave this meeting with the conviction that while theendsof sanitary administration may be the same in ten communities, healthmachineryshould fit a particular community like a tailor-made suit.

American-like, they had a mania for organization. I once heard an aged kindergartner—the savant of an isolated German village—describe my fellow-Americans as follows: "Every American belongs to some organization. The total abstainers are organized, the brewers are organized, the teachers are organized, the parents are organized, the young people and even the juniors are organized. Finally, those who belong to no organization go off by themselves and organize a society of the unorganized." Love of organization and love of copying have given us Americans a feverish desire for what we see or read about in Europe. When we talk about our European remedies we try to make ourselves believe that we are broad-minded and want to learn from others' experience. In a large number of cases our impatient demand for European remedies is similar to the schoolboy's desire to show off the manners, the slang, or the clothes picked up on his first visit away from home. With many travelers and readers European remedies or European ways are souvenirs of a pleasant visit, to be described like a collection of postal cards, a curious umbrella, a cane associated with Alpine climbing, or a stolen hymnal from an historic cathedral.

Experience proves, however, that just as Roman walls and Norman castles look out of place in New York and Kansas, so European laws and European remedies are too frequently misfits when tried by American schools, hospitals, or city governments. Yesterday a Canadian clergyman, after preaching an eloquent sermon, met a professional beggar on the street in New York City and emptied his purse—of Canadian money! Quite like this is the enthusiastic demand of the tourist who has seen or read about "the way it's done in Germany." The trouble is that European remedies are valued like ruins, by their power to interest, by their antiquity or picturesqueness, or, like the beggar, by their power to stimulate temporary emotion.But we do not sleep in ruins, go to church regularly in thirteenth-century abbeys, or live under the remedies that fire our imagination. We do not therefore see their everyday, practical-result side.

The souvenir value of European remedies is due to the assumption that no better way was open to the European, and that the remedy actually does what it is intended to do. Because free meals are given at school to cure and prevent undernourishment, it is taken for granted that undernourishment stops when free meals are introduced; therefore America must have free meals. Because it is made compulsory in a charming Italian village for every child to eat the free school meal, it is taken for granted that the children of that village have no physical defects; therefore let Kansas City, Seattle, and Boston introduce compulsory free meals. But when one goes to Europe to see exactly how those much-advertised, eulogized remedies operate from day to day, it is often necessary to write, as did a great American sanitarian recently, of health administration in foreign cities continually held up as models to American cities: "In spite of the rules and theories over here, the patient has better care in New York City."

We have been asked of late to copy several very attractive European remedies for the physiological ills of school children, and for the physical deficiencies of the next generation of adults: breakfasts or lunches, or both, at school for all children, rich as well as poor, whether they want school nourishment or not; school meals for the poor only; school meals to be given the poor, but to be bought by those who can afford the small sum required; free eyeglasses for the poor, for poor and well-to-do, for those who wish them, for those who need them whether they want to wear eyeglasses or not; free dental care; free surgical treatment; free rides and outings during summer and winter; country children to visit the metropolis, city children to visit countryand village; free treatment in the country of all children whose parents are consumptives; free rides on street cars to and from school; city-owned street railways that will prevent congestion by making the country accessible; city-built tenements to prevent overcrowding, dark rooms, insufficient air and light; free coal, free clothes, free rent for those whose parents are unable to protect them properly against hunger and cold. Every one of these remedies is attractive. Every one is being tried somewhere, and can be justified on emotional, economic, and educational grounds, if we think only of its purpose. Let us view them with the eyes of their advocates.

Would it not be nice for country children to know that toward the end of the school year they would be given an excursion to the largest city of their state, to its slums, its factories, parks, and art galleries? They would grow up more intelligent about geography. They would read history, politics, sociology, and civil government with greater interest. They would have less contracted sympathies. They might even decide that they would rather live their life in the spacious country than in the crowded, rushing city.

City children, on the other hand, would reap worlds of physical benefit and untold inspiration from periods of recreation and study in the country, with its quiet, its greens and bronzes and yellows, its birds and animals, its sky that sits like a dome on the earth, its hopefulness. Winter sleigh rides and coasting would give new vigor and ambition. Why spend so much on teaching physiology, geography, and nature study, if in the end we fail to send the child where alone nature and hygiene tell their story? Why tax ourselves to teach history and sociology and commercial geography out of books when excursions to the city and country will paint pictures on the mind that can never be erased? What more attractive or more reasonable than appetizing, warm meals, or cool salads and drinks forthe boys and girls who carry their little dinner pails and baskets down the long road where everything runs together in summer and everything freezes in winter? One needs little imagination to see the "smile that won't come off," health, punctuality, and school interest resulting from the school meal.

Again, if children must have teeth filled and pulled, eyes tested and fitted for glasses, adenoids and enlarged tonsils removed, surely the school environment offers the least affrighting spot for the tragedy. Thence goblins long ago fled. There courage, real or feigned, is brought to the surface by the anxious, critical, competitive interest of one's peers.

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